Discourse Community Ethnography Reflection

In my essay I examine the discourse of the long car ride community. I accomplished this by accompanying my family on a long car ride from Ohio to South Carolina. I was hoping to get insight into the kinds of lexis and mechanisms of communication that are used in the community. I ended up finding out that the barriers of language and communication are broken down by the uses of talking, music and movies by those who are in a car for a long time. While writing this essay I focused on explaining the lexis and the mechanisms of communication. I had to give examples of each and explain how it contributes to breaking down the barriers of language. The particular skills I worked on were being descriptive and being complete. What I mean by that is that I tried to present my examples in a way that reached out to the reader so they could experience what I was talking about. I also worked on transitions and conclusions. A common theme throughout my writing is having a difficult time with conclusions. This includes concluding sentences at the end of paragraphs and conclusion paragraphs at the end of essays. In the completed version, I feel that I took great steps to getting closer to being able to write effective details, transitions and conclusions.